The Indians
then fled. The boy thus rescued grew up to become the father of Abraham
Lincoln. [Footnote: Hay and Nicolay.]
Now and then the monstrous uniformity of horror in assault and reprisal
was broken by some deed out of the common; some instance where despair
nerved the frame of woman or of half-grown boy; some strange incident in
the career of a backwoods hunter, whose profession perpetually exposed
him to Indian attack, but also trained him as naught else could to evade
and repel it. The wild turkey was always much hunted by the settlers;
and one of the common Indian tricks was to imitate the turkey call and
shoot the hunter when thus tolled to his foe's ambush; but it was only
less common for a skilled Indian fighter to detect the ruse and himself
creep up and slay the would-be slayer. More than once, when a cabin was
attacked in the absence or after the death of the men, some brawny
frontierswoman, accustomed to danger and violent physical exertion, and
favored by peculiar circumstances, herself beat off the assailants.
Prowess of Frontier Women.
In one such case, two or three families were living together in a
block-house. One spring day, when there were in the house but two men
and one woman, a Mrs.
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